Modelling the Relationships of Psychosocial Hazard and Workplace Safety Outcomes among Construction Workers in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This research was carried out to investigate the relationship between psychosocial hazards and safety outcomes among workers engaged in a range of industrial construction occupations in Rivers State. Questionnaires were adapted from various studies and were distributed. Two-hundred and ninty-five (295) respondents had a complete and usable questionnaire. A conceptual model was posited for this study, the model comprises of equipment and environment, work schedule, role organisation, social aspect, organisational culture, and work life balance as the workplace psychosocial hazards and near miss, accident, absenteeism, and job performance as the safety outcomes on the study. Structural equation modelling was then used to test the conceptual model and test the hypotheses using SPSS AMOS software. The result from the study shows that all six workplace psychosocial hazards used in the study had direct significant relationship with the accident safety outcome at p-value (< 0.05). The result also shows that environment and equipment, role in the organization, social aspect and work-life balance showed significant relationships with near miss safety outcome at p-value .05. The study also inferred that equipment and environment, work schedule, role organisation, social aspect, and organisational culture are factors in the workplace that may be associated with absenteeism. The impact of psychosocial hazards experienced by construction workers is an area of growing research as this study has shown, which is yielding results that suggest overall work safety on the construction site should consider psychosocial aspects of work.